Online shopping experiment proves less than green

Believe me when I tell you I’m not a big buyer of online goods. I’m not a big buyer of any goods, really, and when I do get something new (clothes, household stuff) it tends to be secondhand. However, I recently turned to the intertube in my quest for a cotton shower curtain.

Why did I think I needed such a thing? Well, this is one of those things in the "green living" category that should really be reclassified as "healthy living," where you try to purge your environment of various toxins more for the sake of your own lungs and cells than for the sake of the planet. Vinyl shower curtains are bad for you, is what I’ve read. It’s the off-gassing thing.

One doesn’t really think of buying a secondhand shower curtain, now does one? Suspecting that locally owned stores might be out of my price range on this particular item, and wanting to avoid a big-box trek in my gas-burning vehicle, I thought I’d search online for a curtain. I soon realized that organic cotton curtains can run you more than $50, more than $100 if you have a high opinion of your bathroom. Too rich for my blood. I settled (with gritted teeth) on a non-organic cotton curtain from target.com.

This didn’t feel right, but I was already through checkout. (They make it so damn easy.) Two days later, thanks to the twin miracles of the Information Age and long-haul trucking, I had my cotton shower curtain, encased in multiple layers of plastic packaging. And it wasn’t at all like the website had showed it.

Target also makes it damn easy to return stuff. You can take it back to the store if you want. So I got in my gas-burning vehicle and trekked up to Hollymead and picked out a better curtain with my naked eye.

There must be a better way. Anyone know of a good source for secondhand shower curtains?

FAMILY James Madison’s birthday celebration Friday, March 16 Commemorate the 267th birthday of fourth president James Madison in an event featuring the U.S. Marine Corps Band, Honor Guard, Color Guard and the annual wreath–laying ceremony at the Madison Family Cemetery. Free, 1:30pm.

As DeAndre Harris’ attorney played video footage of a group of white supremacists beating him to the ground in the Market Street Parking Garage on August 12, Harris sank back in his chair and closed his eyes. Today, he was on trial in Charlottesville General District Court for an encounter that

Editor’s note: Hours after we went to press, it was announced that Virginia’s De’Andre Hunter would be sitting out the NCAA Tournament due to a broken left wrist (he undergoes surgery Monday, March 19). No. 1 Virginia takes on No. 16 University of Maryland, Baltimore County

First Aid Kit Ruins (Sony) Stockholm’s Klara and Johanna Söderberg have lived a charmed life. In 2007, Swedish state radio turned one of their demos into a summer hit. In 2008, their video of Fleet Foxes’ “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song” went viral, and their 2010 debut won rave reviews—all while

By: Samantha Baars and Erin O’Hare It was exactly a month ago that a gunman shot 17 people to death at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Today, local students and their peers across the nation said they won’t stand for that—so they walked. March 14 marks the first

By Natalie Jacobsen On February 19, the area’s main transfer station for trash and recycling haulers, Van der Linde Recycling, abruptly shuttered its household waste processing facility. The sudden halt jolted Charlottesville and the counties that have relied on Van der Linde as the focal

It wasn’t enough that a wrongful conviction took nearly 13 years of Robert Davis’ life. Now, two years after he was released from prison and more than a year after then-Governor Terry McAuliffe granted him a full pardon, the General Assembly is stalled in a budget war that threatens to hose

Touted as one of the funniest plays ever written, Noises Off follows a troupe of actors that is performing a complete flop called Nothing’s On. Viewers get backstage passes to the ridiculous antics and offstage intrigue of the players, from rehearsal to the last performance, and the cast and

Who really needs an opening act when you have alter egos, right? For the Chapel Hill-based band Southern Culture on the Skids, this was a question well explored in the late ’80s when the group found itself without the funds to pay an opener. With their instruments by their side, they

By Ken Wilson – Before there were pixels there was print, and before there were tweets there were books, and in Charlottesville we haven’t forgotten. We love our books and their authors, and we love “our” Virginia Festival of the Book, the annual celebration of all things literary with

By Celeste M. Smucker – There is a lot of excitement about the 2018 real estate market and sellers are happy to see their homes move quickly from listed to sold at prices that make them smile. For buyers this a more challenging market as dwindling inventories of homes for sale leave them with

To-may-toes. To-mah-toes. ’Maters. No matter what you call them, if you want to be slicing into the freshest ones around come summer, you’ll want to sign up to participate in community-shared agriculture. And now’s the time to do so. The community-shared agriculture (or CSA) model of farming,

Two of Tavola’s bartenders are shaking up national drinks-related competitions. Bar manager Steve Yang was named one of 12 regional finalists in the United States Bartenders’ Guild’s annual World Class bartending competition. “Qualifying is both humbling and terrifying,” Yang says of going

When writer and Charlottesville resident Patricia Asuncion took to the streets of Washington, D.C., during the 2017 Women’s March, her protest felt eerily familiar. “When I was first divorced in the 1970s, I had no credit. I had no bank accounts. I had nothing in my name. I didn’t even have the

On Charlie Shea’s first day of middle school two years ago, she received some words of wisdom from her father, Danny Shea. “My dad told me, ‘It’s going to suck. I’m just going to brief you,’” Shea remembers. In the past two years, she says she experienced “enough bad days to go around,” as well

A stage representative of a beautifully cared for home lights up, as does the face of the youngest version of Alison Bechdel, played by Violet Craighead-Way, as she begins to sing. I had only heard about Fun Home. I had never seen it (or listened to the music). I walked into Live Arts’

Charlottesville man Donald Blakney, who is accused of maliciously wounding an Arkansas resident on August 12, had his charge certified to the grand jury in Charlottesville General District Court on March 8. Eric Mattson, who testified he’s a member of a Constitutionalist group called the

Light rain falls softly and steady on patchy grass, whispering pat-pat-pat-pat as it dampens the rocky soil. It’s late February, and despite the rain, the air is warm at the foot of Bear Mountain in Amherst County. Dean Branham isn’t wearing a jacket, and rain droplets bead and roll off his

An Arkansas man whose own attorney admits he kicked DeAndre Harris in the Market Street Garage August 12 filed two motions to exclude evidence of the brutal beating because he claimed the serious injuries to Harris happened before the kicks. Jacob Goodwin, 23, of Ward, Arkansas, was arrested in